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EU3
negotiations and Russian talks likely to resume
EU-Iran
talks collapsed in August when Iran ended its suspension of
uranium conversion, the first step towards making enriched
uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear reactors or/and
as the explosive core of atom bombs. Iran has repeatedly said
it will continue with conversion work, although it is suspending
actual enrichment as a confidence-building measure. Backed
by the United States, the European Union is trying to resume
talks with Iran on guaranteeing the Islamic Republic is not
secretly developing nuclear weapons.
A meeting
between the EU and Iran is likely to take place in mid-December
or early January, reports AFP. Diplomats in Brussels suggest
that negotiations will try to set a timetable for negotiations,
after which the negotiations will begin at ministerial level.
In order to start negotiations, however, the EU and Iran will
have to agree from which positions talks should be resumed.
As of today, the Iranians, in disagreement with the EU, are
already in the process of converting uranium. Now Iran aims
at resuming talks on the uranium enrichment, a successive
stage after uranium conversion. Europeans instead want to
pick up where negotiations stopped, that is when Iran walked
out and resumed uranium conversion. The EU-3's position is
not to resume formal negotiations with Iran until Iran re-suspends
uranium conversion work.
At its
latest meeting held in Vienna on 25 November 2005, the 35
members' board of governors of the UN nuclear watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency, was expected to review
the conclusions of the meeting held on 24 September 2005,
where it found Iran in non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT). Such a finding requires eventual referral to
the Security Council, which can impose sanctions.
Last week, however, the IAEA decided to postpone taking Iran
to the UN Security Council in order to give the EU-3 and to
the new Russian diplomacy more time to work.
Russia
proposes to allow Iran to conduct uranium enrichment in its
own territory, so Tehran does not obtain the nuclear technology
needed to making atom bombs. Iran refuses to give up the right
to enrichment on its territory. However, the Russian path
may bear more fruits, as Iran may be counting more on Russia,
and China, which have strong economic ties to Iran, and oppose
referral to the Security Council along with 'non-aligned states'
which point to Tehran's right under the NPT to work on the
nuclear fuel cycle. In this new scenario, the EU-3 may eventually
be isolated.
E. M.
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